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Jane Eyre, Charolette Bronte’s tri-fold genre novel, is a compulsively readable novel but covers so much territory that it proves highly problematic when trying to condense and adapt it into anything less than a mini-series. It requires a sure-footing in both writing and directing and an extreme pruning to focus in on certain aspects at the expense of others. Sad, but true. So it was with a great awe that I viewed this version of Jane Eyre which directly lifted the novel’s romantic literature trope of nature as an emotional template and reaction to the characters interior lives. While it has chosen to focus in on the romance between Rochester and Jane at the expense of the rest of the novel’s storylines, I didn’t mind since it excavated their interior lives and erotic underpinnings so expertly.
So much of the success isn’t just thanks to director Cary Fukunaga unique handling of material that’s in direct opposition to his debut feature, the indie feature Sin Nombre that’s a harrowing immigration drama. While the way that he sets up and films the characters is wonderful, without two great actors like Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender it wouldn’t have amounted to much. Think of the way that so much of Wasikowska’s clothing looks so grey and dowdy, drained of color and stiff during the earliest parts of the film and seems to bloom and melt into lighter colors and textures once the romance with Fassbender awakens her to her latent sexuality. A scene that immediately springs to mind is the montage of their courtship which features a delicate and shy kiss underneath a cherry blossom tree. Wasikowska – so stern and stubborn from the beginning – seems to melt, giggle, and smile as if for the first time. Her mousy hair and dowdy dresses seem more chipper and put together. It’s a combination of beautiful cinematography and a actress of tremendous depth and talents.
But there’s also the way that the film opens in the middle, in a harsh, barren and stark landscape with a single solitary figure, so tiny and ready to be devoured by the surrounding landscape, running. Her frail body looks like it is ready to fall over and die at any moment. But within Jane there is a reservoir of strength which makes our first impressions feel so silly. She’s a bundle of contradictions which can make for messy human explosions and emotions – more succinctly: she’s a real person. And Wasikowska, a young actress who I admire with each new role that I see her in, nails every subtlety and nuance. But her Jane can only be so good without a great Rochester, and Fassbender walks a fine line between a romantic daydream of a hero and charismatic untamed and un-caged animal.
The way he swings back and forth between these two extremes during the grand reveal (which is always faintly ludicrous once lifted off the page, and even on it) is a wonder to behold. I hear a lot of talk of X-Men: First Class being the big movie for Fassbender, but he’s been so good for so long that it seems silly to ignore his work in this movie. While trying to wed Jane he’s as eager to please and lovesick as one could imagine the lust object for our heroine, but once things start to sour on their big day he flips the switch with but a frown and a growl. I hope the history books will point to his performances in Fish Tank and this film to explain why he became a mega-movie star.
